Sign the Petition to

Gerould Kern, Senior Vice President/Editor of The Chicago Tribune

Inthe US today, one in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in herlifetime. Nearly three out of four (74%) Americans know someone personally whois or has been a victim of domestic violence.*

Clearly,domestic violence is a big problem in our country – but you wouldn’t know it by reading TheChicago Tribune.

Thepaper’s coverage of domestic violence continues to perpetuate the myth thatthese crimes are random, isolated events rather than the result of ongoingescalation.

By adjusting its reporting standards, The Tribune can help send send a different message:domestic violence is a real, societal problem that affects us all.

We ask that you use theterm domestic violence when reporting on homicides between intimate partnersand stop minimizing these crimes by calling them domestic “disturbances,instances, or disputes.”

How this will help

We are asking that The Chicago Tribune lead the charge for
more responsible media coverage of domestic violence by following standards in the Washington State Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WSCADV) guide for journalists covering domestic violence.

Domestic violence is not an angry outburst - it is a learned behavior. This learned behavior is further reinforced when abusers receive the message from society at large that violence against women is acceptable.

In July of this
year, The Tribune wrote: "A
39-year-old woman was killed in an apparent domestic incident in Addison
overnight." The reporter
minimizes the violence by calling the murder a "disturbance", doesn't speak to
the realities of domestic violence and there is no input from an expert or
resources for the community to access.

There are
countless other examples of articles taken from representative samples that the
paper published in August, September, and October of 2011 that display this same reporting
pattern: reinforcing myths and inaccuracies about domestic violence by implying
victim-blaming or abuser-excusing attitudes, blaming the act on cultural or
class differences, and reinforcing the idea that the fatal violence came out of
the blue as opposed to being the culmination of a history of violence and
controlling behaviors.